On the Grasshopper and Cricket

The poetry of earth is never dead:

      When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,

      And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run

From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;

That is the Grasshopper's—he takes the lead

      In summer luxury,—he has never done

      With his delights; for when tired out with fun,

He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.

The poetry of earth is ceasing never:

      On a lone winter evening, when the frost

            Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills

The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,

      And seems to one, in drowsiness half lost,

            The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.